


Guess this was a lawless land

by lorarawr



Category: Chicago PD (TV), The 4400 (TV)
Genre: 4400 ride or die fan, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hello TV show from the early 2000s, Secrets, This is crack, hidden identity, in which Shawn Farrell grows up changes his name and becomes a police officer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-12 23:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21234524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorarawr/pseuds/lorarawr
Summary: Shawn Farrell dissapears from Seattle for a second time, shortly after returning in a ball of light with 4399 of his closets friends, and creates a new life as Adam Ruzek in Chicago. Adam keeps his head down (sort of), tries to ignore the urge to heal that vibrates beneath his skin, and is a good cop, a better friend, but maybe a shitty partner. After all, you're told at the Academy to tell your partner everything, and Adam is hiding one hell of a secret.





	Guess this was a lawless land

**Author's Note:**

> HI FRIENDS THIS IS CRACK PLEASE DON’T @ ME. Look, this has been in my brain for a YEAR. Also because 4400 was no joke, my end all be all when I was a kid. So I’m trying to figure out how to tie them together. And here’s what we got. A couple of fixes that please just accept: Adam’s dad is now not a cop, but a business man of money and still no importance [ I CAN’T MAKE THIS WORK OTHERWISE PPL]; he gets picked some other way for intelligence during season 1; NTAC didn't start super tracking the 4400 until after S1, so maybe Shawn got away, i don't know hand-wave.
> 
> For those who need a quick like 4400 synopsis: 4400 people from the past 100 years were abducted and all brought back at the same time, with no real explanation given up front. A few people (your boy Shawn/Ruzek included) start to breakthrough with powers almost immediately. Ultimately it is revealed that it wasn't aliens but people from the future who stole them away and then brought them back. Lots of other things happen, and honestly it's a pretty fun show to watch and is on Netflix. As we introduce new characters, I'll add more primers as necessary.

“You tell your partner everything”

“There are no secrets between partners”

And sure, yeah, Adam believe that. Tells Al about his dad, tells him about wanting to be a cop since he was a teen, and leaves out a shit ton of extra. Because some things, Adam just can't say. Like how his name isn't Adam. 

Shawn Farrell disappears from the 4400 registry before the 4400 registry is even really a thing. Federal database tracking is not what it should be, and a guilty uncle overlooks two missed check-ins. Shawn disappears from Seattle in the haze of a crying mother, a jealous brother, and hands placed on a cousin who doesn’t wake up the way he thought he would. Shawn disappears into his father’s tinted SUV, a fresh ID burning a hole in his pocket and the skyline of the space needle fading with a foggy twilight.

He does not look back. He does not ask questions. Does not want to know what leaving will do to _ Uncle Tommy; Uncle Tommy _ who blamed him for Kyle’s coma, blamed him for three years while Shawn was gone, blamed him when he came back, blamed him in a small interrogation room, blame blame blame. Shawn does not care what happens to _ Uncle Tommy. _Uncle Tommy who knew that maybe, just maybe, that bird wasn’t just stunned at Shawn’s coming home party; Uncle Tommy who may just know why Kyle’s vitals spiked the night Shawn visited him in the hospital; Uncle Tommy who still stares him down with unblinking eyes and a furrowed brow of suspicion even when all Shawn does is try.

So Shawn fucking leaves.

He calls his dad in the dead of night three weeks after he returns, weighted down by Uncle Tommy’s suspicions, his mother’s desire to keep him within eye sight at all times, and Danny’s quiet rage mixed with apprehension. He calls his dad, and the gasp on the other end makes his heart sink. No one told his dad that he was back; no one thought to make the call. He always knew that the divorce was ugly, done when he was barely in school and Danny in diapers. His dad has retreated to the midwest and left his mom “the west coast” and enough money to keep the house and lifestyle she had wanted. He got the boys two weeks in the summer, two weeks in the winter, and alternating birthdays up until Shawn disappeared for three years without a trace and Susan wouldn’t let Danny out of her sight.

So Shawn calls his dad and begs for a solution. Mentions that there are rumblings at NTAC of being tracked at all times, mentions how much he feels like he is drowning at home, at school, everywhere. He was gone for three years and came back with 4399 people he does not know and he can barely breath.

So Shawn’s dad shows up in Seattle with a plan; shows up and stares at his first born, his first son, who when he wasn’t looking matched him in height, but kept his mother’s blonde hair. Shawn’s dad, who thought at one time he could be a cop, but found he was better as a lawyer, hugs his boy who disappeared for three years and came back in a ball of light, and tells him he’s got a way out. Shawn’s dad, who’s made his money and then some, who’s got connections and who’s owed some favors, takes a step back and puts a hand on each of his son’s shoulders. Shawn’s dad, who in a world where people don’t get abducted, would be buying his son a drink this year but instead will be buying him a new identity, looks Shawn in the eyes and tells him not to worry.

Shawn’s dad, who hands over an ID for a boy named Adam, born four years after Shawn, son of Michael and Natalie Ruzek, but with Shawn’s face staring back at him, and tell him everything is going to be okay. Shawn’s dad, who is now called Michael Ruzek, who throws away his own name to protect the boy he once thought lost, opens the door to a tinted SUV and gestures inside.

So Shawn leaves Seattle and the 4400 behind before he could ever really even be counted as one of them. And Adam Ruzek arrives in Chicago for senior year, an only child, already “so over this 4400 shit.”

And Adam wishes the story ended there. And for the most part it does. He graduates, he becomes a cop, he keeps his head down, and doesn’t say much of anything about the weird shit going on in Seattle, where most of the returnees still reside.

But.

His hands.

The first time it happens, it’s in the bitter cold of his first Chicago winter. Nothing could have really prepared him for it. It seeps over him and sucks him down and he almost taps out for the milder winters of Seattle before he remembers the anvil of weight of blame that used to settle in his chest. But still, the winter. Walking home from school one night in February, he passes a homeless man face down in the snow, fire only embers in the upturned trashcan near him, It’s a bleak but repeatable scene in the middle of winter here.

But Adam.

Adam remembers what Shawn’s hands could do.

And Adam wonders if his hands could still.

Still heal?

Still kill?

Still save or end like he was a god.

Adam is seventeen, in his first cold lake winter, and he is filled with every emotion and on top of that a humming, vibrating sense of _ need _ to _ do _ that coils beneath his skin.

He could save this man.

A nameless man on the street four blocks south of Clark, in layers of discarded clothes and a whiny, whistling, faltering breath the only remnants of life left. 

He will save this man.

But should he save this man?

Adam lays both hands on filthy, torn garments, and with an urge that he cannot control - something that is not primal, something else- he just does.

The man breathes.

Adam runs.

It is like that for the next few years. In dark alleys, and forgotten corridors, when Adam is stumbling home from a bar, or class, or work, and he finds someone. Drugs, or cold, or illness, or injury, he can cure it all. 

He will only heal. 

He only gives. 

He won’t ever take. 

Only once, back in Seattle, when Adam was Shawn and he thought he could slide back into a life interrupted, that was when he took. Placed his hands on a bully’s body and _ took _. 

He stopped himself. He stopped from going too far. From going where his hands can not bring him back from. 

But Adam knows he could. 

His hands could take. 

It’s probably why he becomes a cop. Just needs to help people in someway, to make amends for the things he knew he could do if he tried. 

If Adam and his father weren’t hiding the fact that he’s technically a fugitive on the run from the federal government, some therapy would have gone a long way.

But that’s the other truth that can’t be shaken. The rumors and whispers that come out of Seattle create more fear and distrust about the 4400. Powers are breaking through, casualties of new frontier in a war not everyone even knows they’re fighting. Books are being published calling the 4400 an answer to a yet unseen threat, returned from all over time to save the future.

And in Chicago Adam keeps his head down and says nothing.

Until he can't anymore. 


End file.
